Social Performance Management Data Platform

As a response to the development and increasing diversity of the inclusive finance sector, common standards and tools have been developed to evaluate financial and social performances, to enable the stakeholders in the sector to have more homogenous view of the current tendencies and practices.
The online platform “Social Performance Management Data Platform” brings together all existing data from various tools for analysing the social and financial performance of service providers, as well as price data and price transparency.

Context

There is no centralisation point for the information generated by these various analysis and evaluation tools, which means that it is difficult to establish an overall view of the information or to compare it easily. Although the Mix Market online platform collects data on financial service providers, this data, which is submitted by the providers themselves, is mostly financial and is not always exhaustive or representative.

Objective

The objective of the Social Performance Management Data Platform project is to fill this gap by creating an online platform to collect all the existing data generated by the various tools[1] designed to analyse the social and financial performance of the service providers, as well as the data related to their pricing policy and the transparency of these prices. The intention is for this platform to be complementary to the Mix Market in the sense that the accessible data will relate, for the most part, to social performance and the fact that the users will receive information regarding the degree of reliability of the consulted data will further distinguish it from the Mix Market.

Therefore, the platform aims, first and foremost, to increase and promote transparency in the inclusive finance sector and to encourage all the actors in the sector to increase their commitment to their social mission. Indeed, facilitating the sharing and access to data regarding the social performance of service providers makes it possible to accord greater value to the most committed actors and to provide guidance to social investors in their decision-making, thereby encouraging the other actors to improve their practices.

Prototype of the online platform

In practice

This platform will enable not only the service providers, but also the regulators, the investors, the donors and even the researchers who have subscribed to it, to consult the social and financial information regarding the service providers and, thanks to a series of functions which have been specially developed for the platform, to analyse the information and to compare it to information about other service suppliers according to a range of criteria (country, region, size, legal status, etc.) with a view to gathering information, taking decisions or carrying out research.

Selection and comparison of data generated by the SPI4 tool

A prototype of the platform was developed in 2017 to test the different functions and the degree of interest of the various parties. The final development phase of the platform has been launched in 2018 based on the evaluation of the first phase and will run through to the end of 2019.

Example of the results of the comparison function for the SPI4 tool

Example of the results of the comparison function for annual rates of charge

At the end of this phase, the platform will contain data regarding at least 600 service providers from 70 countries, since this data already exists. Thereafter, the intention is to continue to feed data taken from new audits or submitted by service providers themselves into the platform.

Stakeholders

The project is coordinated by Microfinanza Rating and CERISE, and financed by ADA, the French Development Agency (AFD) and the Swedish Development Cooperation (SIDA). Other donors also intend to take part in the project during the development phase.